Internet use has continued to grow at a rapid pace. With this growth, the use of the web has expanded to much more than just web browsing and has allowed many applications to utilize the Internet as well. Unfortunately, the massive expansion of the web has negative consequences as well. There are situations where content on the Internet is inappropriate. Situations where content on the Internet is inappropriate may include “adult oriented” material being exposed to children, or use of the Internet against a company's Internet use policy for non-work related activities. Furthermore, there are many situations where computers make automated requests, such as for advertisements, which are not performed by the user but instead are triggered automatically by applications on the computer. Due to the need to block or filter out inappropriate content, web filters have been developed that can be configured to block or monitor inappropriate content based on the environment.
Hardware based web filters are appliances that can be installed on a network inside a firewall to provide web filtering in a centralized place. The appliances also do not require the use of software to be installed on computers on the network making the appliances easier to configure and manage, especially in large environments.
Web filters not only block certain content from reaching a computer on the network, but the Web filters also log and generate reports based on the activity on the network. The activity report typically contains the computer or user activity including violations to the filtering policy. Web filtering reports for policy violations show web site activity as well as violating activity.